James Tingey

Artist Statement

I create work that is a material articulation of relationships, origins, and roles of functional objects and interactions between landscape and utility. Utilizing a vocabulary of functional ceramic objects, my work explores material and process as a vehicle to articulate relationships between object and containment, body and environment. Integral to the production and development of my work is an active engagement in research of material, process, and kiln technology rooted in the historical lineages of ceramic vessels. My research approaches these topics through a variety of modes; investigations of clay and glaze chemistry; utilizing a range of traditional forming methods, to create my utilitarian ceramics. Haptics, ergonomics, the human body, and an understanding of historical and contemporary utilitarian objects inform the physicality of the objects I produce. I am interested in the interactions between material, atmosphere, and form. Surfaces serve as a record of an object’s origins, materially containing the interactions of time and process, which operate as indicators of change. I want my work to exist as an object of utility and as a record of activity and encoded labor. I’m interested in the ability of functional ceramics to oscillate focus between the immediate utility of the object and how it functions in a broader context of class, history, technology, labor, and environment.